Shadows fall – Fallout From the War (metal): Although this looks like a regular album, it’s really one of those throwaway albums that bands put out when their next album falls behind schedule. There are 11 tracks, including six that weren’t good enough to make it onto “The War Within”, one reworked B-side, one re-recorded demo, and three covers. As a fan of the band, I won’t go so far as to say that the album is bad, but it’s definitely substandard. If it weren’t for the three odd choices of covers, I don’t think that there would’ve been an interesting thing on the disc. The first of these is cover of Only Living Witness’s “December”, which I think was a nice nod to a severely underrated band, but because Brian Fair forgoes his normal vocal style in an attempt to imitate OLW’s Jonah Jenkins, the track becomes bizarre and uncomfortably bad. They then do a cover of Leeway’s “Mark of the Squealer” which turns Leeway, a hardcore band, into Anthrax, landing us in the uncomfortably bad zone once again. Finally, they do a cover of Dangerous Toys’s “Teasin’, Pleasin’” with the original Dangerous Toys singer, Jason McMasters on vocals. While the track sounds like it might have been fun to record, if I wanted a Dangerous Toys album, I would’ve fished one out of the 99 cent bin. For my $11, I shouldn’t have to try this hard to like an album. C (As a side note, both of OLW’s albums can be had on a double disc set re-released in June (pricegrabber link), or you can usually just pick up innocents from secondspin for about $4.)
Slayer – Christ Illusion (thrash): Why is it that the first fucking thing people seem to say about this album is that it “marks a return to the original Slayer sound”? I read that Slayer press release, too, and it was generated by Slayer’s marketing machine. Sure, Dave Lombardo returned to the band after a 10 year hiatus, but he’s a drummer. Do you know how much difference he makes in Slayer’s sound, considering he didn’t write, sing, or play a single tone on the album? Yea. He had a little more influence than I did. In the 20 years that I have been listening to them, the only deviation in Slayer’s sound that I know of was between 1985 and 1986 where Tom Araya (vocals) stopped screaming like a girl and solidified his own vocal style. Other than that, I haven’t seen a departure from the Slayer sound for them to “return to.” They’re not Metallica: They didn’t cut their hair and change their sound to try to fit into the corporate machine. If you can rely on one constant in this universe, it’s that the way Slayer sounded in 1986 is the same way that Slayer sounds now. That’s why Slayer fans don’t have to justify staying Slayer fans long after their lifestyles preclude it. If you have been following Slayer, this is a great album continuing where the band left off five years ago with “God Hates Us All”. If you haven’t been following Slayer, don’t write reviews like you have. A
Keely Smith – Spotlight On… (lounge): In comedy, a comic foil is the serious half of a duo that, by the nature of their straight performance, makes the comedic side of the duo seem even more ridiculous. Keely Smith is best known for her role as Louis Prima’s comic foil. This is the first album that I’ve heard from Smith without Prima, and it is markedly different from her Prima material. Her voice is the same beautiful voice that she always projected, but there’s a much larger backing band and better arrangements than in the Vegas years. Although this setup creates a much better showcase for her voice, it also blurs her recordings with most female vocalists of her time. She might not have Prima to make the recordings as fun, but her voice really stands on its own. I can lose miles of road just listening to this disc. B+
Testament – Souls of Black (thrash): I listened to a lot of thrash as a teenager and I can remember seeing Testament album covers, but I can’t remember ever listening to them. I think it was because I used to confuse them with Tesla, a pop-rock outfit who could pretty much lick my big, sweaty balls. Fast forward 15 years, and Pandora is recommending Testament as something that might be right up my alley. If Metallica followed the Slayer plan of non-progression and stayed exactly who they were when they put out “Kill ‘Em All” (circa 1984), they would probably be a kick ass band right now. Because Metallica progressed into the biggest, fattest metal pussies of all time, Testament spent 6 years studying the “Kill ‘em All” album to put out “souls of Black” in 1990. I think it must’ve taken 1 year to realize that Metallica was going off track, and 5 years to get the vocals to sound exactly like Hettfield’s. I’m kidding, of course, but if you like “Kill Em All”, the sound is so close that this could be considered a companion album without the same kick. While I like the sound of it, I have to admit that I get bored with it halfway through because of the repetitive structure and lack of solid hooks. C+
Twista – The Day After (rap): Even though I thought Twista’s previous album, Kamikaze, was an amazing disc for the mind-blowing speed at which Twista raps, I can’t say that I’m impressed with this album. I got this from lala for $1.75, and that’s really my favorite point of the disc. There are only a couple of good tracks, and it seems that Twista has pawned his clever lyrical content for a notebook full of raps about bling, guns, and ho’s. After 25 years of rap, I can’t tell you how tired I think the bling/ho rap mentality is. If he was going to dumb down his writing, I would’ve expected that he at least crank the speed up so high that I wouldn’t care. Unfortunately, there are only a couple of spots on the disc where Twista even uses the speed which he is most famous for. I’m not saying that the album’s trash, but the non-skippable tracks are pretty far apart. And when did Twista go Gangsta, anyway? (a generous) C
Unearth – III: In the Eyes of Fire (metalcore): This what I would consider the third full release from Massachusetts metalcore giants, and it’s a subtle departure from the band’s previous 2 discs. It is the first produced by Terry Date (of Pantera, Deftones and Soundgarden) on the West Coast, rather than Killswitch Engage’s Adam Dutkiewicz here on the East Coast. While you’d expect that taking the Killswitch melodic influence out would fatten the sound up and make it a lot more brutal, but unfortunately, it doesn’t. The disc is faster than their previous releases, but the production seems to be cleaner. It’s like Unearth was somehow washed of their hardcore influences and soaked with metal by all that west coast rain. I would’ve thought that the addition of a Pantera-like sound to anything would up the awesome to 11, but it actually seems to detract from this particular disc. Metalcore is supposed to be half metal and half hardcore, but it seems that when Unearth cranked the metal to 11, they cranked the hardcore to 0. I mean, look at the cover on this disc: There’s axes and candles on there for chrissake. The only thing that could make it more “metal” would be the addition of some sort of Viking, dragon, or map of friggin’ Mesopotamia. I never though that I’d say that I prefer Dutkiewicz’s production style, but this disc is proof that the band should probably come back to good old Massachusetts and have their next release produced East Coast style. Maybe it’s the cold weather or the cold people, but East Coast metalcore and hardcore have a different feel to me. Maybe Seattle should stick to metal and keep their grungy paws out of east coast metalcore. That said, I don’t dislike this disc. For metal, it’s good. It’s fast and rhythmic, but it’s too light on the hardcore side of the house when compared to their previous discs. I really hope they pull it back and don’t become a straight metal band. B
Zeke – Kicked in the Teeth (punk): As always, Zeke plays it with pure punk style, burning through 17 songs in a mere 20 minutes. It certainly is a good ride, although I would’ve given up 2 of those minutes to dump the inclusion of Kiss’s “Shout it Out Loud,” which really didn’t do anything more than give me a laugh. This is album is pretty standard fare for Zeke, and like their other releases, the album is over long before I want it to be. Because most songs are under a minute long, there really isn’t a heck of a lot of differentiation between them, but I’m ok with that. To me, Zeke is like driving an El Camino: It’s fast, ugly, and fun as hell, but won’t pretend that it’s for everyone. B+
Various Artists – Blue Break Beats Vol. 2 (jazz): There are 4 discs in this series, and even though I really liked Blue Break Beats Volume 1, this will probably be the last in the series that I buy. Essentially, the CD is a compilation of Blue Note jazz that has been sampled by other artists. While I won’t deny that the tracks are just as funky and fun as the first disc in the series, it’s definitely not a disc chock full of instantly recognizable samples as the title might imply. Out of the 12 tracks, I only picked out hooks from Ice T’s “New Jack Hustler” (track 2), The Chemical Brother’s “Chemical Beats” (track 6), and Kid Frost’s popular, but cruddy track, “La Raza” (track 12). While 3 out of 12 doesn’t seem like a lot, it’s 3 more breaks than I recognized on the first disc (which I still thought was awesome). If I avoid looking at the title as an allusion to a library of easily identifiable break beats and more as a suggestion that the disc is full of cool, untapped breaks for people intending to sample, the disc becomes less of a gyp and more of a musical playground. Title aside, and regardless of samplability, this should appeal to jazz fans who like the funky Jimmy Smith side of Jazz. B
Various Artists – Punk-O-Rama III (punk): This is the 3rd in a series of 10 punk compilation discs put out by Epitaph. I think there’s something for all punk fans on this disc, as its a veritable “who’s who” of punk spanning ska, hardcore/punk, Bay Area punk, rockabilly, and other sub-genres. While the 25 track disc includes Rancid and A/F which I can pretty much do without, there is plenty of enjoyment left in the tracks from New Bomb Turks, Zeke, Bad Religion, Gas Huffer, NOFX, ALL, Dwarves, etc. etc etc. I picked it up for about $4, but it’s only $6 new, so it’s hard to go wrong. …Unless, of course, someone catches you singing “Rodney” for the 400th time before you realize that the track is called “Rotten Egg.” Not that I would do that or anything. You all know I’m too cool for something like that. Right? Hello? B+
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